The Project Gutenberg eBook of The idealists
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Title: The idealists
Author: Helen R. Hull
Release date: October 19, 2026 [eBook #79825]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Mary Fanton Roberts, Inc., 1917
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79825
Credits: Jens Sadowski. This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDEALISTS ***
The Idealists
Helen R. Hull
The Touchstone, vol. 1, Sep. 1917, pp. 457-463.
Characters: HOWARD WINCHERLY
TOM CHASE
MARY LAKE
Time: The present day, or even tomorrow. An evening in late winter.
Scene: Mary Lake’s sitting room, a room both austere and careless. The
austerity appears in the lack of any personal adornment in the high,
square room; the carelessness in the indifferent scattering about of
books, of coats and a sweater piled in a chair, of neckties making a
splash of color over the papers on the table, of canvases faced against
the walls.
Howard Wincherly, a slight little man in a well-pressed gray suit, is
slumping in a chair by the table, his chunky fingers clasped between his
knees. He watches Mary Lake, his eyes incredulous, somewhat terrified,
his thin lips pressed together, giving him the aspect of a worried
ascetic.
Mary Lake, backed against the open window, facing Howard, is a woman in
her late twenties, with a supple, muscular body and an intense vitality
in her eyes and coloring. Her hands are thrust into the pockets of a
faded blue painting smock. A suppressed eagerness destroys the effect of
the solicitude she is trying to express in her face.
MARY: That’s all, Howard.
HOWARD: All! You knock over the world, and say that’s all!
MARY: Must I begin all over again?
HOWARD: You can’t break our engagement like this—for no reason—Mary! Is
it something I’ve done—said? I’ll do anything you say——
MARY: Oh, no. No! It’s just that I don’t love you. I won’t marry you.
HOWARD: But you must love me. You—you couldn’t have—why, I’ve seen
you—betraying more than you would ever say——
MARY: I suppose you mean kissing you. Is that it?
HOWARD: Yes.
MARY: (Leaving the window and coming forward to a chair near the table)
You know, Howard—I’m going to shock you terribly—but kissing’s no sign
at all. (She seats herself, her hands clasped loosely about one knee)
HOWARD: Mary! You—would let any man kiss you?
MARY: No. Not any man.
HOWARD: Well!
MARY: But within limits, you know——
HOWARD: You can’t understand what you are saying. I won’t believe that
you could have allowed me to love—as you have unless you really loved
me.
MARY: Don’t you see! There you go again, knowing more about me than I do
myself.
HOWARD: Of course I do. You are trying to make me think you a horrible
creature, a woman without self-respect, who would let any man kiss her——
MARY: That’s not quite what I said.
HOWARD: When I’ve seen your eyes, all luminous—don’t you think I’ve
known—and knelt to you for the love you gave me!
MARY: Howard, I wish you’d try to believe what I say—just for a few
minutes.
HOWARD: (Rising and moving about with short, irritated steps) I won’t
believe you when you say such things. They aren’t true. You have
promised to marry me.
MARY: Do you remember, several times—when I have tried to tell you—that
if you didn’t—take all the love I had to give—you couldn’t keep me?
HOWARD: You wouldn’t marry yet!
MARY: And so you would take what you wanted—up to your limit——
HOWARD: Are you accusing me—for decency?
MARY: Never seeing——
HOWARD: A man has to protect a woman.
MARY: Well—I might have gone on—if he hadn’t written.
HOWARD: Why should that drive you mad! There’s more between you than
you’ve said.
MARY: Am I mad? (She throws out her arms) I’ve been stifling and
suddenly I see why. (Leaning forward, she brushes papers and ties off
the little alarm clock on the table) If you don’t go, he’ll be here.
HOWARD: (Seats himself on a straight chair near the window) I am not
going. I will stay and tell him I’m your affianced husband.
MARY: But you aren’t! That’s all over.
HOWARD: I won’t have it over! (Beseechingly) I can’t!
MARY: I’m sorry, Howard.
HOWARD: (Eagerly) Then see him, send him away, and we’ll——
MARY: Oh, he won’t stay. It’s curiosity he’s coming for. To see what he
made of me! I was just a child. He played with me—(Howard winces)—with
my soul. I was an ordinary, homely girl, expecting to marry and settle
down, as every other girl I knew expected to. He discovered my wings.
Then he went away—and left me with a lot of unused love. He hadn’t
wanted it—on the level where he moved. You caught me on the rebound.
HOWARD: Mary! Don’t desecrate what you have been!
MARY: Is truth desecration?
HOWARD: It has the same sound.
MARY: You had a chance to tether that love. You haven’t.
HOWARD: Is he coming back to amuse himself with you again?
MARY: (Rises with a restless shake of her shoulders) Oh, you can’t see!
HOWARD: I see the whole structure of my life being knocked over. Mary!
I’ve planned all the rest of my life about you. You can’t step out
without even a reason.
MARY: (Slowly) I know those plans you have made. You’ve draped them all
about me. They stifle me.
HOWARD: Plans any woman should desire draped—as you sneer.
MARY: Any woman? How do you know? Do you remember once—I said I never
could stay in the nursery to tend children—if I wanted to paint. You
told me, oh, most severely! that you would expect me to be on hand when
the children had need of their mother. And I kept silence.
HOWARD: But if the children needed you——
MARY: I’ve tried to break through your plans with some of my own, and
yours were iron fetters snapping shut about my hands.
HOWARD: It’s just that I know things will seem different to you, once
you are married, in my home. I haven’t meant to fetter you.
MARY: You can’t help it.
HOWARD: I’ll leave you free——
MARY: (Stopping near him in her restless moving about the room) You
think you could? You—who’ve grown content with——(She laughs, breaking
off at the sound of a knock. She turns her head toward the door, her
lips parted, a subdued radiance drifting into her face. After a moment
she crosses to the door, flings it open and steps back)
TOM CHASE (stands in the doorway an instant, looking at Mary before he
speaks. He is tall, with a narrow face, gray eyes well spaced, and
satiric lips. His laugh is as satiric as his lips; his smile, which is
rare, gives his entire face an unexpected gentleness and sympathy)
TOM: Hello, Aspasia! (He extends his hand. Mary lays her hand in his,
with a casualness which suggests the revival of an old habit) You’ve
picked an out of the way place for your tower. (Draws his fingers across
her wrist) You are more beautiful than ever, Aspasia.
(Howard rises, kicking his chair aside. Mary turns; the present
telescopes suddenly into a vivid past, so that she is held above herself
in a brooding intensity)
MARY: This is Howard Wincherly, Tom.
HOWARD: (Stiffly) How-de-do.
MARY: I told him you were coming, but he wouldn’t go.
HOWARD: (Seating himself again) I’m not going. It’s too important.
TOM: Am I interrupting anything?
MARY: You aren’t. It’s all over.
HOWARD: It’s not over, Mr. Chase. We are engaged. Suddenly, upon hearing
that you are coming, Mary attempts to break the engagement.
TOM: (With a laugh) Aspasia! You aren’t engaged—to Mr. Wincherly!
HOWARD: Why not!
TOM: To that respectable man?
MARY: He called it that. I just said I’d marry him, and now I can’t.
TOM: Is he very rich? Aspasia, what have you been playing with him for?
MARY: Howard, won’t you please go?
HOWARD: (With dignity) No! Mr. Chase, are you in love with her?
TOM: (Laughing again) In love? Mary, did you think I was in love with
you?
MARY: (Steadily, although the question wipes the color from her face)
You know very well I never did.
HOWARD: You break our engagement because of him!
TOM: Come, come. She may give me as a reason. I don’t mind being given
as a reason. But it will be more interesting to know the real cause. (He
drops comfortably into the armchair near the table, Mary watching him as
she answers)
MARY: You are the reason. And you are the reason I ever—was engaged.
TOM: I? Ah, Aspasia, can you find no better excuse——
HOWARD: That’s what she says. That she’s given me leftover
affection—love you didn’t want!
MARY: (She moves slowly behind a chair, where she rests her arms on the
back. She speaks hesitatingly, like a person trying a new language. It
is, after all, a new language she is using, for it is the expression of
long silences) I didn’t intend that remark for you, Pericles. But it is
true.
TOM: Aspasia! Did I ever make love to you? We understood that love is
only a delusion of the bourgeois—you and I—a mask for an ancient,
disreputable instinct. Surely I never lured you into that morass!
MARY: You were subtle. I believed you—with my ears!
TOM: I found you unawake. I liberated your spirit. There was nothing
else between us.
MARY: Nothing. And yet when your fingers touched mine, a flame went
through my heart. (She watches Tom with grave, heavy eyes)
HOWARD: Mary!
MARY: Hush! I am finding out something. Pericles—you knew it! You saw I
loved you!
TOM: I was afraid you did, at first. (He smiles at her, his slow,
strangely sympathetic smile. Mary’s fingers strain together) But that
wasn’t what we wanted. Women had loved me. To be quite frank, they were
always falling in love with me. Falling in love—curious phrase, that. I
thought of a companionship with a beautiful woman which should leave the
flesh behind—and yet have all the nuances of emotion. And you—you were
so deliciously young and eager to be taught. You grew out of that first
reaction to me into this other.
MARY: Grew out of it? I grew around it. I hid it. I struggled to build
walls thick enough to endure the terrible fire that blazed within—that I
might give you what you wanted. All because I thought you didn’t know.
And you were training me into your mould. Just as he has done! Have you
come back to see whether I kept the shape you would give me?
TOM: Ah, Aspasia, don’t you realize that all your ferment made you heady
wine, and I’ve come back (Under her intensity of gaze he puts off his
mockery) I’ve come back because I missed you, Mary.
HOWARD: (Violently) What have you come back for? More of your nuances of
emotion?
MARY: Howard, you’d better go, now.
HOWARD: I can’t go and leave you. You aren’t yourself.
MARY: (Seats herself, looking slowly from one man to the other. Howard
rises and grasps the corner of the table, somewhat ridiculous in the
stress of his feeling. Tom leans back in his chair, one leg thrown high
over the other knee. His satiric delight in the situation is gradually
slipping away) Not myself? Who, then? Your idea—or his?
TOM: Don’t be bitter, Mary. It doesn’t become you.
MARY: You didn’t wish any of the uncomfortable qualities in me, did you?
Do you, Howard? I’m bitter now because I’m raw where I’ve wrenched
myself out of chains. But I am out.
HOWARD: (With a beseeching humility) Mary! Do you mean our engagement?
TOM: Aspasia! Let me forge another set of chains. I’ll marry you. I’m
tired of missing you.
MARY: (Leaning her elbows on the table and cupping her chin in one hand)
Funny, how you can go on, without ever knowing why. Here was I, always
waiting for you to come back and discover that I loved you. And you had
drawn me to the very edge—and left me. Oh, I remember that night you
went! You quoted Shaw to me—“Cleopatra the Queen must have
fortitude—courage—pride!” Were you afraid I’d make a scene? Then,
because I was helpless with love, I threw myself into the first kind
hands that offered. (Into her voice comes a note of compassion) Poor
Howard! You had to shape me up, too. If you had just taken my whole life
with your kisses I might have lived forever on my illusions.
HOWARD: Mary, I can’t hear you insulting yourself——
MARY: I insult only your ideal, Howard. I’ve lived up to it as long as I
can—a nice woman—liking to be kissed, but not knowing why—eager, not too
eager, to be the mistress of your proper household. I’m sorry if I’ve
hurt you. I didn’t know I was seeking relief for the ravishing
of—something more than just my body.
TOM: (Rising and towering over Howard) Can’t you see, Mr.—Mr.—what is
your name—that she wants you to go?
MARY: Yes. Both of you.
TOM: (With a swift step to the table, where he pulls Mary’s hands from
beneath her chin and holds them firmly) I’m not going. I’ve been a
fool—but I’ve come back.
MARY: Yes?
TOM: (Bends over and kisses her. Howard makes a desperate step toward
them, and stops, his hands clutched) There! Aspasia, I love you!
MARY: (As he releases her) That bourgeois morass!
TOM: You’ve said you love me!
MARY: (Rises, pushes back her chair, shaking herself with a splendid
gesture) I was young—to lose my head! Now I’m cleared of it. (She drops
her arms with a sigh) But—I’m tired. Won’t you go, both of you!
TOM: You don’t mean you don’t want me!
MARY: (Laughs quietly)
HOWARD: But what are you going to do?
MARY: (With a vague gesture about the studio) Oh—work. And I’ll hunt for
a man who’ll meet me halfway. Body and soul and children and work—who
won’t have a notion for me to live up to——
HOWARD: I’ll do anything you say!
TOM: There isn’t a man on earth——
MARY: Perhaps I can make one over—to my idea!
TOM: Practice on me, Aspasia! That would be interesting!
MARY: (Somewhat regretfully) I couldn’t. I bear too many of your
finger-prints.
HOWARD: Anything you wish, Mary! That the real woman I know is you,
desires——(He breaks off, disconcerted at Mary’s laugh)
MARY: Good-bye! (She retreats toward the corner of the room. Her laugh
is not hysterical; in its devastating ring of amusement it has the
promise of healing) Your plaything’s broken. The strings won’t make it
dance. Good-bye!
(After a moment of staring at her, the two men look at each other.
Either of them, alone, might linger insistently. The two can’t. Tom,
with a gesture of resignation which attempts to be satiric, stalks out
of the door. Howard, with several backward glances, follows. As the door
closes behind them, Mary drops on to the stool before the easel, her
hands relaxing in her lap)
Transcriber’s Notes
Transcribed from The Touchstone, vol. 1, Sep. 1917, pp. 457-463.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public
domain.
The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved.
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